Slagmoth's page

I guess I am a bit old school, min/maxing is discouraged in my games, as the story should trump all mechanical things. The mechanics are a framework but when you spend so much time maxing out this and minimizing that, you miss out on the intrigue and story lines going on.

The DCs for some of the skills allowed to rogues are entirely too low in some circumstances especially UMD to the point that by 10th level there really is no chance of failure on almost anything even if they don't take a 10 which they cannot always do. Rogues tend to save the party a lot in my games simply because they are hard to kill unless they do something totally stupid at mid to upper levels.

It's important to keep in mind enemy HP. When you're not full-attacking you are not dealing meaningful damage at higher levels. Just as an example to Odraude, let's say you have a 9th level Fighter (+9/+4 BAB).

Now let's say this fighter began with an 18 Strength (do-able on 15 pb with a +2 racial), and has increased his Strength to 22 (2 level increases and a +2 item). Now he's hitting at +15 for +9 damage with his two-hander (let's give him a greataxe 'cause axes are cool). Now let's give him a nice +2 weapon. That's +17 for 1d12+11 damage. Now let's give him Power Attack for another +9 damage, bringing him to +14/1d12+20 damage. Dat is some serious damage you might say! But wait, we're not done yet, we toss on Weapon Training (axes) for +1, and weapon specialization and greater weapon focus!

Muahaha, behold your mighty 1d20+17 to hit and 1d12+23! Mucho damage eh!? :D

Except...you're level 9. The average CR 4 enemy has enough HP to survive one of your attacks (40 hp). The average CR 7 enemy has enough HP to survive a few of your hits (85 hp). The higher the CR of the encounter goes the less you matter because HP scales faster than damage. The more dynamic the encounter you face, the less you matter because the more foes and/or tricks an enemy has the less likely it'll matter.

If you encounter a pair of Ogre Magi (a "challenging" encounter, merely APL+1, each with 95 hp each plus regeneration), moving up and hitting them will deal around 22.5 points of damage on a non-crit. You have dealt about 22.5/190 total HP for the enemy encounter. But since enemies aren't just HP bubbles the ogres move away from you in flight (one takes a withdraw action into the air and heals 5 hp from regeneration). And so on and so forth.

At very high levels it's even worse. You probably won't deal 20% of a mook's HP per swing.

The strongest you will ever be relative to the enemies you face will be at 1st level where a single move+attack has a good chance of removing a whole creature from a fight, even if that...

You are correct, but there is a decent reason for that fighter having more "worth" at lower levels as you say... at those lower levels his own hp are not that high so he has to kill them much quicker. At higher levels he can soak and avoid more damage and get buffed with better things.

That said, I agree that about level 12 things start to get a bit out of whack, which is why I typically play mid-range campaigns as I feel they are more balanced.

Clerics are the most powerful class in the game. Second best BAB, Two good Saves, Healing, Spell Damage sometimes surpassing Arcanes, Armor and by default part of an organization. Each and every time my friend has played a cleric he has single handedly derailed and destroyed campaign worlds. It is impressive. 2nd edition had it right... they did not have 8th and 9th if they had armor. But eh.

Sounds like Pathfinder isn't for you then.

It is the system we chose, as it was better than 3.5 in a lot of ways. However, that said, it still did not address some of the fundamental flaws of the magic system but then tries to gloss over "scripture" and ignore the obviously overpowered spells but fixing choice others such as polymorph.

Changing Witch and Bard to divine doesn't really change much. Further separation of divine versus arcane simply gives them more defined roles and keeps the overlap out of the classes, which in my opinion is a good thing.

Druids were the priests of a different culture other than the Anglo-Saxon and Roman. Technically, a Monk is a priest of a very specific discipline in Asia.

With a few changes Pathfinder could work fine... I just hate that their book says use these broken spells as benchmarks without them doing the exact same thing and re-evaluating their spells simply because players say stuff like "it has always been that way", this doesn't make it correct.

Spell system has been broken since before 3.0, 3.5 made a half-hearted attempt to fix it. However, as written when compared to the rules out of UM, thus by their own rules... Heal is level 20, has the power of 2 3rd level spells (and more) one 4th and does more healing than a maximized cure Crit, thus 7th. It is ridiculous.

Magic Missile is likewise broken compared to their own system, unerring strike on multiple opponents, the very first Magic Missile did a d6 and required a roll.

I have been slowly changing things up and rewriting things for a while, going to roll that out to my players on the next campaign.

I would love a clear separation of divine vs arcane on some system ever. If you require a third party for your power, you are divine caster and since the gods hold the keys to healing (positive and negative energy) that means Bards are divine casters, which actually works better historically for me anyway if you look at Greek and Roman Myth with Apollo and the Muses etc... also by the very description of the Witch she is divine in casting as well.

Divination by definition means that Arcane casters don't get them... that being said some of the powers that are described as divinations can easily be rewritten under other schools, like arcane eye. Things that would absolutely require a 3rd party like true strike would be under divine lists.

Druids are a culture not a class...

Hate Animal Companions, your class/power should not be defined by a creature controlled by the GM.

Rogues getting spells? Made me gag a bit... martial classes don't get magic short of items.

True Resurrection has been completely removed from my games because once you get to that point you have no consequence of death... If there is no consequence there is no drive to avoid it. (yes I know there are "worse things" but still ridiculous).